Text Preview

Continue reading...

As one of the most important authors in American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson is well known as the prominent as the leader of the transcendentalism movement. Also a distinguished American essayist and poet, Emerson was the first distinctively American author to influence European thought.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803. Seven of his ancestors were ministers, and his father, William Emerson, was minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Boston. Emerson graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and for the next three years taught school in Boston. In 1825 he entered Harvard Divinity School and in 1826 was “approbated to preach” by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. Despite ill health, he delivered occasional sermons in churches of the Boston area. In 1829 he became minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) of Boston. In that same year he married Ellen Tucker, who died 17 months later. In 1832 Emerson resigned from his pastoral appointment after declaring that he had ceased to regard the Lord's Supper as a permanent sacrament and could not continue to administer it. On Christmas Day, 1832, he left the U.S. for a tour of Europe and stayed for some time in England, where he made the acquaintance of such literary notables as Walter Savage Landor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. His meeting with Carlyle was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
On his return in 1833, Emerson settled in Concord, Massachusetts, and became active as a lecturer in Boston. His addresses, on such subjects as “The Philosophy of History,” “Human Culture,” “Human Life,” and “The Present Age,” were based on material in his Journals (published posthumously, 1909-14), a collection of observations and notes that he had begun while a student at Harvard. His most detailed statement of belief was reserved for his first published book, Nature (1836), which appeared anonymously, but was soon correctly attributed to him. The volume received little notice, but it has come to be regarded as Emerson's most original and significant work, offering the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. This idealist doctrine opposed the popular materialist and Calvinist views of life and at the same time voiced a plea for freedom of the individual from artificial restraints.
The next year Emerson applied these ideas to cultural and intellectual problems in his lecture “The American Scholar,” delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa

How to Cite this Page

Essay on Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance
- Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson believes he writes quite the persuading argument in 'Self-Reliance.' Wielding his pen as if it were Excalibur, he vies to stimulate and challenge the down-trodden mind in his classic work on the American Spirit. His lines are affecting, romantic, and hypnotic, especially at the first reading; his thoughts on the page beget inspiration for the reader. 'Self-Reliance' has its value in its boldness, its construction, and mature attitudes toward consistency and failure.... [tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson Reliance Essays]:: 2 Works Cited

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. Early in his life, Emerson followed in the footsteps of his father and became minister, but this ended in 1832 when he felt he could no longer serve as a minister in good conscience. He experienced doubts about the Christian church and its doctrine. These reservations were temporarily alleviated by his brief association with Unitarianism, but soon Emerson became discontent with even their decidedly liberal interpretation of Christianity.... [tags: People Ralph Waldo Emerson Biography Essays]:: 4 Works Cited

Famous American Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathanial Hawthorne
- The period of the late eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth was cosidered the Romantic era in Europe and in America. This movement was a large scale rebellion against the Englightment period ideas where science and logic ruled the literary arts. Authors took several approaches on how to convey to the readers social and metaphysical opinions through the tone in a series of novels published. Tone is apparent in much of the American Romantic era writing including that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.... [tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Ha]

Trascendentalism and Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- There have been countless religious rebellions throughout history, but none quite like that of Transcendentalism. At the time of the movement’s birth, newly acquired religious freedom in the United States allowed for new ideas and beliefs to blossom freely. Ideas and beliefs that the public and government previously greeted with bitter rejection. At the heart of Transcendentalism lied its most famous ambassadors, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his apprentice, Henry David Thoreau. Although Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau shared similar views and beliefs relating to Transcendentalism, the approach each author took in writing and making the ideas that were so important concrete was not alw... [tags: rebellion, religion, belief, Thoreau, Emerson]:: 7 Works Cited

The Sphinx by Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- What one believes and does it in the world, has to do with what has happened in the past. History effects what happens today and it never ends. Understanding what someone does can only occur by looking at their past. This very controversial poem, "The Sphinx" written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, displays the religious aspects of his life, but also the mystery and sorrow of his life. Throughout the poem, the reader sees that the all knowing Sphinx has seen history past, yet still struggles to understand.... [tags: poem, figurative language, symbolism]:: 4 Works Cited

Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- You look around at your surroundings, and analyze everything you see. The phone that rests on your coffee table reminds you of the phone you threw at your best friend when you learn she betrayed you- that was the day when you realized you had to be your own best friend. The brown coffee table takes you back to when you looked into your dog's deep hazel eyes and realized that you had to put her out of her misery and give her a lethal shot- that sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing to do are the same.... [tags: leader of the transendentalist movement]:: 5 Works Cited

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- 3/10 The Transcendental movement of the 1830s is considered among scholars as one of the many great reformations of the 19th century buried within the tombs of history. Great Poets and authors published modern-yet-ancient ideological works describing the roots of this reformation, which based itself around the idea of a universal connection between all objects. Out of many contributing to this movement, one man named of Ralph Waldo Emerson distinguished himself as singular above all. With such essays and works as Nature and Self-Reliance, Emerson set himself as the leader of a movement toward Nature and the entity known as “the Over-soul”.... [tags: Biography]:: 1 Works Cited

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature Essay
- "In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) In his essay, "Nature", Ralph Waldo Emerson describes man's relationship to nature and to God.... [tags: Emerson Nature Philosophy]

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism Essay
- Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson believed in the potential within every individual to achieve a heightened state of being and awareness through a close observation of the world and an introspective look at himself. Infused in his work are the influences of transcendentalism and his life as a Unitarian pastor. James D. Hart, when discussing the spirit of transcendentalism, states, "Man may fulfill his divine potentialities either through a rapt mystical state, in which the divine is infused into the human, or through coming into contact with the truth, beauty, and goodness embodied in nature and originating in the Over-Soul.... [tags: Biography Biographies Essays]:: 8 Works Cited

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay
- Ralph Waldo Emerson Properly Acknowledged by Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly took his place in the history of American Literature . He lived in a time when romanticism was becoming a way of thinking and beginning to bloom in America, the time period known as The Romantic Age. Romantic thinking stressed on human imagination and emotion rather than on basic facts and reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson not only provided plenty of that, but he also nourished it and inspired many other writers of that time.... [tags: essays research papers]

Related Searches

Society of Harvard; a second address, commonly referred to as the “Address at Divinity College” delivered in 1838 to the graduating class of Cambridge Divinity College, aroused considerable controversy, because it attacked formal religion and argued for self-reliance and intuitive spiritual experience.
The first volume of Emerson's Essays (1841) included some of the most popular of all his works. It contained “History,” “Self-Reliance,” “Compensation,” “Spiritual Laws,” “Love,” “Friendship,” “Prudence,” “Heroism,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” “Intellect,” and “Art.” The second series of Essays (1844) included “The Poet,” “Manners,” and “Character.” In the interval between the publication of these two volumes, Emerson wrote for the Dial, the journal of New England transcendentalism, which was founded in 1840 with the critic Margaret Fuller as editor. Emerson succeeded her as editor in 1842 and remained in that capacity until the paper failed in 1844. In 1846 his first volume of Poems was published (dated, however, 1847).
Emerson again went abroad in 1847 and lectured in England, where he was welcomed by Carlyle. Several of Emerson's lectures were later collected in the volume Representative Men (1850), a work reminiscent, on the whole, of Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840). Emerson's visit abroad produced a brilliant travel book, English Traits (1856). His Journals give evidence of his growing interest in national issues; on his return to America he became active in the abolitionist cause, delivering many antislavery speeches. The Conduct of Life (1860) was the first of his books to enjoy immediate popularity. Included in this volume of essays are “Power,” “Wealth,” “Fate,” and “Culture,” This was followed by a collection of poems entitled May Day and Other Pieces (1867), which had previously been published in the Dial and the Atlantic Monthly. Although he did little writing after this time, and his mental powers declined, Emerson's reputation as a writer spread. Society and Solitude (1870) contained material he had been using on western lecture tours, and Parnassus (1874) was merely a collection of his favorite poems. His works also include Letters and Social Aims (1876) and Natural History of Intellect (1893). Emerson died in Concord on April 27, 1882.